“It’s- Not HERE!”
“Calm down, sis,” Celestia consoles. “When I designed this place, I did allow for the possibility you might try to use it against me. There is an exit, and I can open it.”
“But we can’t use magic here!”
“True, Alicorn magic does not function within this dome- but once we leave it, we can feed on the lunar energies for a few minutes and return to Equestria.”
Luna blinks. “Lead the way,” she says.
Celestia looks down at the ground, blushing slightly. “Unfortunately, I’ve forgotten much of the interior layout. Perhaps you could lead the way? It’s positioned at the point along the wall that is the closest to its furthest point. I can’t remember which floor it’s on, though.”
Luna stares at the ground, thinking for a few seconds. “Sooo, that thing actually is a door?”
“Maybe- shall we go-”
“Celestia?” a familiar, mechanical voice speaks in her ear.
Princess Luna tilts her head curiously towards her shocked sister. “Sis?”
“Guardian?” Celestia asks, turning her head slightly away from her sister as she recovers.
“Yes, it is me- though I have to wonder where you got Concordiat coms from.”
Princess Luna blinks, momentarily confused, before deciding she must be talking to somepony over the coms. Which strikes her curiosity- who is there to be talking to out here?
“Con- WHAT?” Celestia asks. “Isn’t that the ones that’ll get blown to pieces automatically?”
“Yes. You should be safe in the center layers of the dome, but you’ll want to disable or remove your coms before going anywhere near the outer shell, for fear of getting shot at. For now, at least.”
She double taps her bracelet, switching off her comlink, looking at her sister with an absolutely horrified look. Her sister immediately disables her com as well.
“Zeus and the Sentries…” Celestia pauses. “Are enemies.”
If sound traveled through space, they would have heard it in Canterlot.
31.27 minutes have passed since Twilight set a ten-minute goal, and they are finally departing. Much of this time was spent waiting for Twilight, as she spent endless minutes reading up on what they might find on the moon. She has mentioned some ‘Guardian’ entity Celestia told her about once, but was not able to find anything on it in her library.
Either way, I have a satellite on course to overshoot the moon- and gain a visual on their arrival location- in just thirty-eight seconds. Another four will be taking up orbit in 12.59 minutes, to establish long-term communication and surveillance of the lunar surface.
From the moment the first satellite crosses the horizon line, I will have approximately 2.41 minutes of com time before it progresses out of range; I intend to use this time to decide whether or not I am needed.
Six ponies appear in a flash of violet light on the lunar surface, all wearing Zeus’ nearly invisible ‘pressure suits’, allowing them to ignore the airless environment. They glance at each other real quick- then Fluttershy lets out an ear-curdling scream that cuts off just as suddenly as it had started. Their being able to hear each other through the vacuum is through Rarity’s spell on their pressure suits, rather than through their coms- so Twilight’s is still off. She begins to consider activating it- but leaps backwards quickly to avoid her friend’s abnormally vicious swing.
“What the-? Applejack asks wildly, also bounding backwards. Nopony else is in the immediate danger zone.
Twilight manages to capture the rogue pegasus in her magical aura while she thinks. Fortunately, it takes her only two seconds to realize what must have happened- something she’d asked Zeus about shortly after everypony had gotten the ‘neural link’ upgrade. He’d told her that, while technically possible, he had yet to detect anything capable of talking to their headsets, let alone using them to control a pony. They must have found something capable of just that.
“Turn off your coms!” Twilight screams, even as she uses her magic to push Fluttershy’s left hoof against her bracelet twice, to no effect.
Two seconds later, Applejack slams into Twilight, rolling her away just in time for something to smash into the ground. A second later, as Applejack tumbles away, she erects a wall of magic to barricade against Fluttershy’s attacks- and Pinkie’s. “What the-?” she begins.
Applejack cuts her off, having accidentally tapped thrice instead of twice. “Twilight, RUN! It’s taking everypony over!”
After this, she begins twitching rather uncontrollably- and Twilight takes the advice, teleporting herself to a distant hill. After a quick glance around her, during which she locates the ‘thing’ Discord wouldn’t name, she focuses on her friends, visible from her position. She watches as they stand stalk-still for a few seconds, listening to their breathing through Rarity’s spell as Rainbow twitches and shudders to a halt. Applejack is the last to finish twitching and shuddering, at which point they break and scatter, as if searching for her. At the same moment, Rarity’s spell breaks, and Twilight triple-taps her bracelet.
Good thing the pressure suits have no effect on signal recognition- and that the triple-tap thing doesn’t activate the com, only the neural link. She can’t remove the headset without exposing herself to the vacuum, so she figures taking control of it herself is her best bet.
Success. She does find that something has altered many of the ‘nanites’ Zeus left in her body. Good thing Zeus equipped the headsets for ‘nanite reprogramming’- and that whatever it was hadn’t gotten to all of them. This problem takes about ten seconds to solve, restoring the original programming- and repairing the damage they had done to her body. Whatever it was, the computer side of her mind indicates, it had been attempting to destroy her, probably because it couldn’t control her.
She listens to the messages flying through the air around her, mostly from her friends, but refuses to respond to them. After all, her analysis suggests those signals will attempt to subvert her headset’s base programming protocols, should she release the defense protocol that had activated the moment she had activated the link. Something called RKSA- which, once her ‘nanites’ are finished ‘reprogramming’, it sends them into communications lockdown with a single message.
Further analysis suggests her friends’ coms have lost their normal communications programming… Wait. From this position, she’s picking up two very weak signals, with good security headers and friendly IFF. She decides to try breaking com silence without releasing that RKSA thing.
“Okay. I’ve updated the IFF control on all the interior weapons, but I’m picking up increased com activity out there. Looks like some- NOO!”
Both Princesses jump at the exclamation. The Guardian had switched to go through both of their comsets on Celestia’s request, as Luna is no longer Nightmare Moon.
“What happened?” Celestia asks quickly.
“Huh… That was a faster reaction time than I expected. Looks like something a/ dozen kilometers outside was trying to reach you. It used all the same security headers as yours, and its Concordiat IFF read ‘Twilight Sparkle’.”
“Twilight?” Luna asks, alarmed.
“Is she okay?” Celestia demands.
“It would appear so. She went off the air within milliseconds of my warning. Your ‘Sentries’ fired on her position, as expected, but I detected a small surge of magic- consistent with Unicorn teleportation- immediately beforehand.”
“Where are the others?” Luna demands.
“The others?”
“Twilight wouldn’t come alone,” Celestia states. “She probably has five companions.”
“I have not detected any other Concordiat IFF signatures… Hold one. I can confirm five new Sentry IFF signatures, flagged as conquered enemy systems. They appear to be emitting signals suitable for penetration of the security on your comsets.”
The two princesses stare at each other. “We’re doomed,” Celestia states.
“Shall I add Twilight’s IFF to the permission list?”
“Yes please!” both Princesses state together.
“Can we add anything Concordiat to that list?” Celestia asks.
“That’s even easier- so long as you DON’T take off your comsets.”
“That’s okay,” Luna answers.
“We can always reprogram them later, if we need to,” Celestia states.
“Okay, original targeting programming restored. Here’s hoping those five conquered allies can be restored before they come too close.”
Twilight teleports again, this time landing just a few yards outside of the dome- and dashes up against it, dodging into a corner as the weapons mounted on the walls swivel to point at her. They’re not much unlike the smallest ones they’d discovered in that pit in the Everfree- except that these are willing to point at her. None of them can point at her in this corner- and she’s already verified she’s burned too much energy dodging those bolts of light to teleport all the way back to Equis. She’s busy thinking about the weapons she’d seen on the inside walls through the windows from her last vantage point. She’d quickly vacated that one as some of those outside weapons started zeroing in.
“Okay, I’ve located Twilight again. She’s just outside the dome, hiding in a corner- one of the few weapons blindspots outside. I hesitate to contac- BOLO!” The Guardian breaks off midsentence, crying out excitedly with a single, incomprehensible word- probably one in its own language.
“What?” Celestia asks. She’d had to teach it Equestrian just over a thousand years ago, when she had discovered it- and still doesn’t understand a word if its language. After all, it learned so many times faster than she did.
Finally! My lead satellite has risen high enough above the horizon and has established contact with Twilight…. Nopony else. Twilight instantly volunteers information about their arrival- and I recognize the first millisecond of her com logs. A single command, and her com goes into combat mode. The Princesses’ coms follow suit- by this point, I’ve managed to reach their coms by using Twilight’s as a relay. It burns more power, most notably reducing the available processing power for Twilight’s neural link, but the vastly improved security of a constantly shifting high-encrypted stream should be virtually impossible for this enemy to penetrate. This enemy for which I do not recall a name, only a catalog entry: ‘Hostile Race 047’. They never could stand up to a Bolo, but anything smaller requires a greater numerical advantage to have a chance against them.